Process control devices such as flow controllers are used extensively in industry to control and monitor processes. In particular, flow controllers are used to monitor the flow of fluid in a conduit. Sophisticated versions of these devices may control batch processes in which a supply conduit is monitored to determine the volume of fluid delivered per unit time. This information may then be used to control valving for precisely metering a quantity of fluid to a container or process. For these applications, the flow controller is typically coupled to a flow meter mounted to the conduit and receives flow information in the form of pulses. The unit counts the pulses and based on the counts per unit time, determines the flow rate and/or the volume of fluid delivered.
Process control devices including flow controllers are currently available which are, in effect, programmable to enable a given flow controller to work with a variety of flow meters and in a wide variety of applications. Many of these flow controllers, accept not only pulse inputs for determining flow rates, but also accept temperature information in order to compensate for changes in fluid viscosity in their volume calculations. These devices may also include control devices such as relays for controlling peripheral devices such as control valves
The programming ability of some of the prior controllers enabled the device to be "tailored" to the process or application. For example, multiplying and/or scaling factors, communication protocols, and peripheral interfaces are usually different in every application and must be specifically configured. With prior devices, configuring the controller for the application it is to be used in, could be time consuming and difficult. In some cases, obscure control codes needed to be entered. In many, if not most cases, the operating manual had to be consulted in order to determine the codes that needed to be entered.
In more recent flow control devices, a "setup" program has been implemented which includes a series of prompts that are displayed by the system, which asks the user for parameters or other information that is needed for the configuration. In some devices, this is termed a configuration menu. In order to program the controller, the user is required to cycle sequentially through each setup step even if minor changes to the current setup are necessary.